How Many Mario Games Are There?
There are over 200 official Mario games across more than four decades and almost every genre imaginable — platformers, kart racers, RPGs, sports, puzzle games, even a typing tutor. The franchise has sold roughly 890 million copies, making it one of the best-selling in history. But the count is slippery for a reason most pages miss: no other character has been credibly cast in this many unrelated jobs. That sprawl is the real story — and it’s what the explorer below is built around.
👔 Every job Mario has ever held
The reason there are 200+ Mario games is that he’ll do literally anything. Tap a job to see the games that prove it.
The most successful spin-off. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Mario game ever; Mario Kart World launched the Switch 2.
Carpenter, plumber, doctor, racer, referee, Olympian, typing tutor — one mascot, every genre.
Why nobody can give you an exact number
The honest answer is “200+,” and the plus sign is doing real work. The trouble is deciding what counts as “a Mario game.” Do you include spin-offs where he’s one of many characters (Mario Kart, Mario Party)? Sports games? Obscure educational and arcade titles? Re-releases and Deluxe versions? Crossovers like Super Smash Bros., where he’s a playable fighter? Nintendo itself has noted that more than 85 individual Mario games have each sold over a million copies — and that’s just the hits. Strip it back to the numbered main-series platformers and you’re looking at roughly two dozen; open the doors to everything and you sail past 200.
The numbered platformers — and the newest games
The spine of the franchise is the main-series platformers, from Super Mario Bros. (1985) through Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023), the most recent 2D entry and the fastest-selling Mario game in history. On the 3D side, Super Mario Odyssey (2017) remains the flagship. But the current centre of gravity is the Switch 2 era: Mario Kart World launched alongside the console in 2025 and is already the best-selling Switch 2 game by a wide margin (around 14.7 million copies). The single best-selling Mario game of all time, though, is still Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at roughly 69.5 million copies — a racing game, not a platformer.
How many Mario movies are there? Four — and two made a billion
This is what the search data really wants to know, and most game-focused pages ignore it. There have been four Mario films:
A little-known Japanese animated film — the first Mario movie, and one most Western fans have never seen.
The infamous live-action flop with Bob Hoskins as Mario. A box-office failure that became a cult curiosity — and the source of the "Mario Mario" full-name gag.
Chris Pratt and Jack Black. Grossed $1.36 billion — the highest-grossing video-game film ever and the first to pass $1 billion.
The April 2026 sequel. Crossed $1 billion worldwide — the first 2026 film to do so — making Mario the rare franchise with two billion-dollar movies.
The 1993 live-action version was a famous disaster; the 2023 reboot was the opposite, becoming the highest-grossing video-game film ever at $1.36 billion. The 2026 sequel, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, crossed $1 billion too — a third film is reportedly eyed for around 2028.
From “Jumpman” to global icon
Mario started as an accident of licensing. In 1981, Shigeru Miyamoto needed a character for an arcade game after Nintendo failed to secure the rights to make a Popeye title. The result was a stubby carpenter named Jumpman in Donkey Kong; his moustache and cap existed because drawing a mouth and hair was too hard on early arcade hardware. He was later renamed Mario, reportedly after Nintendo of America’s landlord. And his full name? The 1993 film and later Nintendo comments leaned into the gag that it’s Mario Mario — which would make Luigi “Luigi Mario,” so the two of them really are the Mario Bros.
The best-selling franchise that keeps lapping itself
By most measures Mario is among the two or three best-selling video-game franchises ever, alongside Tetris and Pokémon, at roughly 890 million copies and climbing. What makes that figure unusual is how broadly it’s spread: it isn’t one mega-hit carrying the rest, but dozens of million-sellers across totally different genres. When the video-game crash of 1983 nearly killed the home-console market, it was Super Mario Bros. in 1985 that proved games could be deep side-scrolling adventures rather than single-screen score chases — and surveys in the early 1990s found Mario more recognisable to American children than Mickey Mouse.
Is Mario outgrowing the games that made him?
For forty years, “how many Mario games” was the only count that mattered — the games were the franchise. That’s quietly stopped being true. In 2023 and 2026, two animated Mario films each grossed over a billion dollars; together they’ve out-earned most of Nintendo’s individual game releases and turned Mario into a Hollywood property. Add the Super Nintendo World theme parks, the merchandise, and a manga that has sold hundreds of millions of copies in Japan, and the plumber now generates enormous value in places where you never pick up a controller.
The genre sprawl in the explorer above was the early warning sign. A character who can be a doctor, a racer, a referee and an Olympian isn’t really a video-game protagonist anymore — he’s a logo that happens to have started in games, as flexible as Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty. That flexibility is exactly what makes him work on a cinema screen or a theme-park gate. The 200+ games built the recognisability; the movies are now cashing it in.
So the count of games is still rising, but it’s no longer the headline. The more telling number might soon be box-office dollars or park admissions. Mario spent four decades proving he could do any job in gaming — and the punchline is that his biggest job now may be one that isn’t a game at all.
Sources
- Nintendo investor reports (May 2026) and Statista — franchise sales (~890M), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at ~69.5M, Super Mario Bros. Wonder at ~17.4M.
- Wikipedia, “List of best-selling Switch 2 games” — Mario Kart World at 14.7M as of March 2026.
- Box Office Mojo via GameSpot / Newsweek (June 2026) — The Super Mario Galaxy Movie passing $1 billion; The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) at $1.36 billion.
- Super Mario Wiki and Nintendo Fandom — the four Mario films (1986, 1993, 2023, 2026), the Jumpman/Donkey Kong origin and the “Mario Mario” name.
Related
- How Many Legend of Zelda Games Are There — Nintendo’s other flagship
- How Many Pokémon Are There — the franchise that rivals Mario for the sales crown
- How Many Characters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate — Mario has the most fighters
- How Many FIFA Games Are There
- How Many Halo Games Are There
- Games & Gaming hub · 🎲 Surprise me
200+ games, 890 million copies, four films and two billion-dollar hits — the carpenter who became a plumber ended up doing every job there is.